RAFAH: Displaced again and again by Israel’s military offensive on Gaza, Mahmoud Amer and his family have now pitched their tent near gravestones in a Rafah cemetery, the last place of relative safety in the devastated strip of land.
The family is among dozens camping at the cemetery, a sandy expanse overlooking the Mediterranean Sea on the horizon, because they feel less threatened by Israeli bombardment there.
“People were forced to come here to this safe place, which is a cemetery among the dead,” said Amer, who is displaced from the Al-Shati refugee camp in northern Gaza with 11 family members, including children and grandchildren.
“It’s better than living in residential areas where houses could collapse on our heads,” said Amer, who spent weeks in other places as the family gradually made its way south, fleeing the Israeli advance.
More than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people are now locked in Rafah on the enclave’s southern edge by a fence separating it from Egypt. Israel has threatened to attack the tank area when it finishes the battle in Khan Younis north of it.
The cemetery features neat rows of low, pre-war cement graves with plants and flowers, inscriptions and peeling paint.
It also has primitive graves, graves of people killed in war: piles of raised sand the length of bodies with rough blocks of cement at each end.
“Every day bodies are brought for burial. We pray to them and stay with them and ask for mercy for them,” said Amer.
The lack of food and water and the constant fear of a military attack were excruciating, Amer said.
Also read: King Charles makes first public appearance following cancer diagnosis
“The dead are in comfort, while we, the living, suffer pain and go through very difficult conditions. There is no water, no proper help, the situation is so bad,” he said.
Children ran in small groups between the rows of graves. A girl in a pink tracksuit sat on one of them, plucking small pink flowers and carefully filling an empty can with them.
“I see children, our children, playing among and above the graves,” Amer said.
“This has become our life, all about death. Even while walking, we see death in front of our eyes every second.”
The war was sparked by militants from the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, which attacked southern Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 people and kidnapping 253, according to Israel.
Vowing to destroy Hamas and free the hostages, Israel responded with an all-out military assault on Gaza that local health officials said killed more than 27,000 people.
